Washington D.C., November 5, 2003 - A White House tape of President Kennedy and his advisers, published this week in a new book-and-CD collection and excerpted on the Web, confirms that top U.S. officials sought the November 1, 1963 coup against then-South Vietnamese leader Ngo Dinh Diem without apparently considering the physical consequences for Diem personally (he was murdered the following day). The taped meeting and related documents show that U.S. officials, including JFK, vastly overestimated their ability to control the South Vietnamese generals who ran the coup 40 years ago this week.

US Senators, neocon and liberal war columnists and assorted political appointees are clowns who are in way over their heads as they try to fit Iraq into their (really incomplete) models of human nature.

Meanwhile, the Deep State Baathists left over from Saddam Hussein's regime are orchestrating the successes of ISIS. I think it is a bad idea to try to reconcile with these folks. Better to separate the Baathists into their own country and let the Shias go on without them.